Conventional approaches to security services often involve uniformed personnel. Such personnel may have varying degrees of training before actually working on site at a location where security services are needed. Most, if not all, aspects of such personnel are determined by the company which contracts with a property owner or manager to provide such personnel to provide such security services. Thus, with conventional security services, the service provider determines who will serve a security personnel for a particular client or at a particular site, what training such personnel will have before providing services to the client or at the site, what uniforms will be worn by such personnel, and so forth.
In addition to uniformed security officers who patrol a client's premises and thereby provide security services, conventional security services can include visual surveillance and monitoring. Such conventional visual monitoring can include the use of cameras at preselected locations in or around a client's premises or facility. Such cameras can provide visual images to a remote location where a security officer can monitor them. Such a location can be a remote command center. In addition, such conventional systems allow the cameras to automatically sweep from side-to-side, or to respond to directions from a security officer for side-to-side or up-and-down movement, to thereby increase the camera's field of vision.
Conventional approaches to providing security services have several drawbacks. First, the speed and efficiency with which information regarding the security services is provided is often undesirable. For example, a conventional approach is to have an officer who provides security services prepare a written daily report summarizing the services and events of a given day that are relevant to the security services provided to a particular client site. Such reports are typically prepared in a handwritten form, typed up later in a paper form, and then provided to the client with many other daily reports from other security officers, other locations, and perhaps even daily reports for other days. The client who receives reports in this conventional manner must first wait for several days to several weeks before receiving them and, once they are received, must then read through them and figure out what, if any, information should be cataloged and possibly filed for later use. This same conventional approach also typically applies to the preparation and provision of incident reports, which are conventional for reporting on an incident, such as a break-in, fire, injury, theft, assault, or any other type of even that a client might be interested in monitoring and recording. This conventional approach to security services thus delays a client's access to such reports, and makes it difficult and costly for the client to maintain copies of the reports and/or the information provided in the reports for possible later use.
In addition, personnel turnover at companies which use such conventional methods tends to be rather high. The turnover rate for contracts between the security service companies and their clients tends to be rather high. Third, even effective security services do not necessarily result in customer satisfaction or increased loyalty. Security services which reduce crime rates to little or no crime are not necessarily enough to prevent high rates of contract turnover or employee turnover.
Many recent advances in technology have not been applied to improve the conventional approach to providing security services. For example, the Internet is not used to provide security services. The Internet essentially consists of a network of computers, often connected through telephone lines (although sometime connected through other means, such as fiber-optic cables, wireless radio signals, infrared signals, and the like). Computer files on computers connected to the Internet can be accessed by other users of the Internet. Information stored on the computers connected to the Internet is usually lodged in files called web pages, which can include printed matter, sounds, pictures, video clips, and links to other files and web pages. Such web pages are typically formatted so that a user can place a cursor over an icon relating to a given file, and then access that file by clicking once.
Electronic commerce over the Internet has progressed significantly. For example, Amazon.com, Inc., which has grown into a major corporation, began by selling books to the consumers over the Internet with delivery of the books by a delivery service. U.S. Pat. No. 5,960,411 is assigned to Amazon.com and describes a method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network. The patent describes how a consumer can click on a button in a web site in order to place an order for an item. U.S. Pat. No. 5,960,411 is hereby incorporated by reference.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,207, assigned to Walker Asset Management Limited Partnership, is entitled as a method and apparatus for a cryptographically assisted commercial network system designed to facilitate buyer-driven conditional purchase offers. The patent purports to allow prospective buyers of goods and services to communicate a binding purchase offer globally to potential sellers, for sellers to search for relevant buyer purchase offers, and for sellers potentially to bind a buyer to contract based on the buyer's purchase offer. U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,207 is hereby incorporated by reference.
The methods and apparatus used to provide conventional security services have not taken advantage of the benefits of the Internet and its growing use. Instead, conventional security service providers have used the Internet simply to provide promotional and marketing information about themselves and their services to potential customers.
Other improvements in technology have not been used in conventional methods and apparatus for providing security services. For example, certain types of wireless devices (such as “walkie-talkies”) have been used in conventional security services for many years. However, the widespread and relatively cheaply available cellular phones, personal digital assistants, and other devices which allow a mobile person to receive Internet web pages, e-mail, or other information from other computers or similar devices at remote locations, have not been used in conventional methods or apparatus for providing security services. Similarly, the Internet allows users to remotely access web sites which may contain various types of information, including video or audiovisual feeds from cameras at a remote location. Nonetheless, the use of the Internet and its capabilities have not been integrated into conventional methods or apparatus for providing security services. Conventional security services also have not provided a “paperless” approach to providing information to clients. As a result, conventional security services are more costly, inefficient, less timely, and less valuable and helpful than they should be.